State of Chaos

Digital effects created a chaotic situation for agency DDB Chicago. And, that was a good thing.

In a recent commercial for State Farm called “State of Chaos,” CG was used to interrupt the relative calm of a suburban neighborhood. In a split second, the scene turns hectic: cars are overturning, people are running every which way as they dodge flying objects, telephone poles are crashing down, sprinklers are spraying water everywhere. The cause of this chaos? An alien robot that leaves behind a path of destruction.

The amusing spot was directed Jim Jenkins of O Positive.

The digital effects throughout this live-action spot were created by The Mill NY using a variety of tools: Autodesk Maya for modeling, Autodesk Mudbox for texturing, Autodesk Softimage for animation, lighting, and rendering, The Foundry’s Nuke and Autodesk’s Flame for compositing the imagery into the scenes, The Pixel Farm’s PFTrack and Science D Vision’s 3D-Equalizer for tracking, and Mental Images’ Mental Ray for rendering. On the hardware side, the team used Macs, PCs, and a variety of Linux workstations for the production.